It was unearthed by a team of workers digging a well on the property.
“It is a special star sapphire specimen, probably the biggest in the world,” Thilak Weerasinghe, the chairman of the National Gem and Jewellery Authority of Sri Lanka, told the BBC. “Given the size and its value, we think it will interest private collectors or museums.”
Ratnapura, which literally means “city of gems” in Sinhalese, has become synonymous with precious stones after a long legacy of notable gem discoveries. Sri Lanka itself is a leading purveyor of precious gems and earned around half a billion dollars through exports of these stones last year. That doesn’t make the discovery of the Serendipity Sapphire any less special, though. Experts believe the ginormous cluster, which has a subtle pale blue hue, formed some 400 million years ago. The fact that it was found by chance in someone’s backyard is, quite simply, an astonishing stroke of serendipity.
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